Tag: civic space

First and foremost, we want to give ahuge thanks to everyone who made a nomination for the Best of Awards and helped uncover the things that make Windsor such a unique place to live. Also, thank you so much for your patience. We had an unexpected delay sourcing some of the materials for the celebration, but things are back on track and we’re holding The Best of Awards on Thursday, May 8th from 6pm – 10pm!

We hope that this change isn’t prohibitive and you can make it; it’s going to be a blast. All you have to do is bring the person you nominated along with you. Refreshments will be served and everyone who was nominated will receive a personalized award during the ceremony. If you weren’t able to make a nomination, come along for the celebration anyways!

One Woman Workshop: A ResidenZINE by Rosina Riccardo

A zine is a small edition of self-made, self-published bodies of work made up of text, photos, or found content. Since 2010, Rosina Riccardo has been creating and assembling zines of her own, and most recently hosts Zine Workshop Nights at CIVIC Space on a bi-weekly basis (the next date being Wednesday, December 18th at 7pm).

For a new and upcoming two-day (weekend) residency, Rosina will create content from scratch, which will reflect her time spent observing and interacting with the downtown core. Upon completion, a limited run of the zines will be made available to the public at Civic Space. Stay tuned for more info!

This workshop, hosted by Windsor’s very own Momentum Film & Video Collective and happening at Broken City Lab’s CIVIC Space, will explore several historical and contemporary concepts and practices of experimental video through screenings, discussions and a hands on video production and editing project. If you’re interested in digital and analog video, this workshop will help you sharpen your skills in visual experimentation and allow you a chance to create with others. We hope to see you there!

Feel free to bring your own camera for shooting & computer for editing.

Late last year, we started hosting a series of weekend residencies at CIVIC Space. They were designed to bring together two people (and sometimes more) to write about socially-engaged practices. We wanted to provide a platform, or an excuse, or at least a quiet space to spend a bit of focused time writing. We wanted to do this because we were curious about the gap in writing from emerging practitioners, and that curiosity was driven as much out of our desire to read more from our peers as our realization that we have done very little writing on our own.

So, we posted a call for submissions on our website under the title of 1W3KND.

1W3KND stood for One Weekend, Three Thousand Words, No Distractions. It would be a brief, yet focused two days, just long enough to pull away from everyday life, but not so long that the itch to overly-polish any of the writing would arise. It would ideally put people into a dialogue, maybe even with a stranger, to try to tease out new entry-points into likely familiar conversations and capture an urgency around itself. It would concentrate this activity in a specific place without necessarily insisting on a response to it.

Between November 2012 and February 2013, we were happy to host the following artists, writers, curators, designers, thinkers, and scholars:

The residency as an experiment, as a site of production, or as simply a retreat, spurred writing that reflects a diversity of approaches towards articulating the concerns, ethics, aims, and ideals of socially-engaged practices. Largely written by emerging practitioners and minimally edited, this is not necessarily a cogent collection of essays — in fact, such an expectation would arguably be missing the point. This book captures an energy and urgency around a complicated set of ideas still unfolding in relation to a world rapidly shifting around them. To have the opportunity to collect the texts, at the early stages of so many of the contributors’ practices is a gift and hopefully a tool for further reflection and dialogue across geographies, politics, and practices.

If we had more time at Civic Space, we’d probably do this again. Maybe someone else can pick up where we left off.

This new project is quickly coming together (and officially launching here at CIVIC SPACE on Thursday, April 18th at 6pm), and you can check out more of their process in the meantime on their awesome project blog!

Please join us for a publication release party and a celebration of the city!

Spirit of Windsor: An Outsider’s Guideis a project from Portland-based artists Sarah Baugh and Nicole Lavelle. Arriving in Windsor with absolutely no previous knowledge of the place, the two spent one week investigating. They responded to their status as visitors to the city of Windsor by creating a guide based on walking, wandering and chance. The resulting publication is a cursory glimpse of this place, intended to act as a jumping-off point for locals and visitors alike.

Copies of the guide will be available, as well as refreshments and door prizes from local eateries and businesses. Select excerpts from the guide will be exhibited in the space.

When: Thursday, April 18, 6-8pm

Where: Civic Space, 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor ON

All are welcome!

Also on April 18th from 7:30pm to 9pm…

SB Contemporary Art is pleased to present a group exhibition titled, Survey featuring the work of four artists completing the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Windsor; Amanda Dudnik, Michael Marcon, Allen Matrosov, and Pearl Van Geest.

Visitors of the exhibition will be able to assemble their own workbook from printouts of the text designed by students of the program, Erin Charpentier and Travis Neel. Visitors will also be invited to submit their own assignments for possible use in the workbook. This exhibition will accompany a lecture by Professor and Co-director of the program Jen Delos Reyes, regarding the topic of education and Art and Social Practice. Also on display, a collective bibliography and relevant framing questions by Paul Ramirez-Jonas, a visiting professor in the program.

Also, with the support of the University of Windsor’s School for Arts and Creative Innovation, Jen Delos Reyes will be giving an artist talk on Thursday, March 21 at 12pm in Room 115, Lebel, followed by an open house at CIVIC SPACE from 7pm-10pm (also on March 21).

All Tomorrow’s Problems doesn’t aim to necessarily solve anything, but it takes up the position that we can’t wait for anyone else’s solutions either. Every Monday night, a group of people (artists, communicators, designers, academics, students, researchers, strangers, and just all-around passionate people) get together and try to spark conversations around the problems we’re encountering on an everyday basis and the long-term, large-scale potentials of them.

Those conversations are sometimes focused, while other times they’re rather sprawling. The work last night revolved around a decision to make a series of posters on a range of issues the group might continue to tackle at large. Nudges, adjustments, conversation starters were the general description we gave to the rationale behind the posters. The form was also constrained by these rules.

5-minutes to design and then we discuss.

The posters captured prompts and positions.

Some were interactive sketches.

Others a plan for a serial conversation.

Some riffed off of existing campaigns (CCS, talk to your kids about art).

Others attempted to claim new territory.

Fill-in-the-blanks.

Familiar interfaces.

Companion pieces.

Promises.

Sketches of thought patterns.

Most of the results at the end of the night.

Sketching ideas, but no commitments to production yet.

We used Letraset to typeset the posters.

Tanya and Veronica sorting through sheets of random fonts…

…there’s an immediate gratification to applying the letters one by one, as we all became designers for the evening.

Flip me and change Windsor for ever.

Randy working his green pen to annotate the grammar posters, with Phil’s notebook of ideas.

Dan’s ‘Take me to your neighbour’ idea.

Windsor, you are unpredictable.

Nicole working with a very heavy font.

More grammar, by Randy.

Great Windsor (forthcoming).

End of the evening.

Phil’s interactive poster, part 1.

Phil’s interactive poster, part 2.

You should come by next week. Not sure if we’re making posters or not, but you can be sure it’s going to to the best two-hours you’ll have spent on a Monday night in a while. As always, it’s free and open to all ages.

Tattoos have been a long-lasting part of our cultural history, revealing glimpses of where we’re from, where we’re going, and who we think we are. Windsor is Forever is a new community-driven art and tattoo project that will give residents of Windsor an opportunity to make a permanent mark, on themselves.

Conceived by Portland-based artist, Jason Sturgill, Windsor is Forever will kick off on this Thursday, February 27th with Sturgill taking over CIVIC SPACE hosting events, doing archival research, and speaking with members of the community. Residents are encouraged to come meet Sturgill at CIVIC SPACE from February 27th to March 3rd to talk about their favourite places, landmarks, and people in the city. Sturgill will also be looking for Windsorites to give him guided tours of their favourite places so that he has source materials for open sketch night where the tattoo designing will begin. That sketch night begins at 7pm on March 4th, with Sturgill co-hosting ACWR’s Sketch Night at CIVIC SPACE with local artist Dave Kant. This work will lead to the end goal of creating a series of Windsor-based flash tattoos ready to be inked onto members of the community.

Then, on March 7th, CIVIC SPACE will be turned into a FREE tattoo shop for the day, hosted by local tattoo artist Dave Kant of Advanced Tattoo. Residents that want to receive a tattoo will be asked to choose from the flash sheet that have already been designed.

Anyone eager to receive their Windsor tattoo or just interested in sharing a story is encouraged to fill out the form below with an explanation on why they believe Windsor is Forever!

*Please note that since the tattooing is only happening for ONE day, we have a limited number of spots open. So if you’re interested, please sign up below ASAP!

*We’ll be in touch by the afternoon of Tuesday, March 5th if you’ve been selected to receive a tattoo, along with an approximate timeframe for your appointment on Thursday. We’ll do our best to accomodate as many people as we can!

We’re pleased to host the Green Corridor Explores exhibition, opening on Thursday, November 27th at 4pm, which features a series of projects, proposals, and ideas developed over the Fall 2012 semester with Professor Rod Strickland.

The opening event on Thursday will have students on hand to discuss their projects, which focus on sustainable urban practices in downtown Windsor.

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Broken City Lab is an artist-led interdisciplinary creative research collective and non-profit organization working to explore and unfold curiosities around locality, infrastructures, and creative practice leading towards civic change.